Local elections 2014: Declaration times

The 2014 local elections are taking place on Thursday 22 May and many councils will be counting ballots through the night. The first set of declarations are expected to be from Broxbourne at quarter to midnight on Thursday 22 May, with the last being Lewisham Council at 2am on Saturday 24 May. You can see a full list of declaration times in time order below.

LGiU also ran a quick survey to get a sense of how officers are feeling about the elections. When asked “how do you feel the EU elections will affect turnout?”, 63% of respondents felt it would have no real impact either way and 22% felt that the EU elections will increase turnout.

When asked “Why are you not counting straight away at the close of polls?”, respondents commented:

Duration of verification at combined poll with large European Ballot Papers, followed by local count, likely to be circa 7 hours hence Friday count. Plus cost of paying staff and venue overnight would be greater.

A daytime count makes it more accessible to candidates, agents, parties and the voters.

Staff need a break and it will be easier and quicker to organise the next day hopefully with fewer errors than trying to count into the early hours of the morning.

By the time the postal votes from the polling stations are processed and transferred to the count venue it is likely to be 2 in the morning, which is a very bad time to start the verification of 3 elections, likely to take 4/5 hours, before we could start counting.